Two recent columns in Technician titled “Cut the Crap” and “Get the Crap Together” gave hog farmers a lot of, well, crap.

Since Hurricane Matthew, Rick Dove, the senior adviser of the Waterkeeper Alliance, and the rest of his organization have been painting a grim picture of pollution and blaming it on farmers — and two columnists for Technician bought their spin hook, line and sinker.

After the hurricane, an official report from the State Department of Environmental Quality documented that hog farmers handled the floods amazingly well. Across the state, 99.5 percent of the lagoons on hog farms weren’t flooded. They didn’t leak or spill. In all, there are over 4,000 lagoons. And when the Neuse, Cape Fear and Lumbee Rivers roared over their banks, only 14 were inundated. Those facts sharply contradict the dark image of environmental nightmares the Waterkeepers have been spinning to the press. 

Hog farmers’ success during the hurricane didn’t happen by chance. Seventeen years ago, after the tragedy of Hurricane Floyd, farms in flood plains were closed. A moratorium prevented new farms from being built and hog farms were required to be inspected every year to ensure farmers comply with state regulations to protect the environment. All of this adds up to North Carolina having the toughest regulations in the nation. This time, when the hurricane arrived, the regulations worked.

But none of those statistics — like the 99.5 percent success rate — were mentioned the articles run in echnician. Instead, they bought the Waterkeepers’ spin that hog farmers are “infesting our waterways and spreading like poison through the veins of our planet.” 

Hog farmers aren’t perfect, but they work hard every day and they care about the environment. Farmers are good stewards of the land; if they fail to protect the land they farm they’ll soon be out of business.

The Waterkeepers have tried to use the hurricane, which brought heartbreaking loss to many of our communities, to paint a picture of doom. They twisted a few facts about 14 lagoons that were inundated and never mentioned the 4,000 that were not. They never give the full picture. Hurricane Matthew was a test and I’d say that at a score of 99.5 percent, the hog farmers passed. 

Marisa Linton is a graduate from NC State University with the class of 2016